Ronda Rousey showed up in better physical shape. Nothing changed in her fight style. She got torched by Amanda Nunes. Miesha Tate predicted this all week long but somebody must have gotten to her at the last minute because she did a 180 on TV and said Ronda would win based on how she looked at the weigh-ins.

Cody Garbrandt torched Dominick Cruz in the cage as much as Cruz torched Garbrandt in their vocal talk battles. Now we get Garbrandt versus a cockier TJ Dillashaw. The ghost of Urijah Faber remains omnipresent.

This was the farewell show for Mike Goldberg and Joe Silva. No fan fare on the way out. WME blew it.

Chael Sonnen defended Dana White not giving out salaries for fighters in the past because it would give greedy friends, family members, and hangers-on a chance to steal money from UFC talent. This was in response to the disclosure of Ronda Rousey getting a $3 million paycheck for the UFC 207 fight. The disclosure was from the Nevada State Athletic Commission. They regularly disclose base salaries for fighters.

Sonnen isn’t sure that this was Ronda Rousey’s last fight. When you’re winning, fans beg you to stay and keep going. When you’re losing, fans aren’t begging.

Sonnen said that judo is a terrible base to transition from for modern MMA. Hidehiko Yoshida made a fair chunk of change, thank you very much.

13 Responses to “UFC 207: The end of an era for Ronda Rousey, Mike Goldberg, and Joe Silva”

Speaking of Japanese mma, Ufc was a good appetizer rizin is up next.
RR is no comparison to Yoshida, a legit bad ass, he didnt disappear for a year after getting beat.
Anyway rizin puled out all the stops with that crazy light show,, leds in the ring ropes!! and the general high quality intros video packages. Sweaty takada on drums tonight…

1. I wouldn’t be shocked of Ronda tried to hurt herself after this fight. I really hope that never happens, but I just get the sense that her mental capacity isn’t high enough to deal with another bad performance like this.

2. If I never saw Ronda Rousey or the Diaz Brothers fights again, I would be happy. The Diaz brothers are annoying and Rousey was just too full of herself for my tastes.

3. The UFC is once again hurting for stars. With Ronda gone, and I do think she is gone, all they have left is Connor McGregor. They need to be spending their time on FOX more wisely to build up real stars instead of pretty faces.

4. Cro Cop just won the Rizin Grand Prix at 42 years old. He has now won his last 6 fights and got a check for $300,000. He also avenged his loss to Gonzaga during this time. Now would be a great time retire while on top.

5. Not giving Goldberg at least some recognition after 20 years with the company was garbage. They would have at least acknowledged it on a major broadcast with a major sport.

6. As for the next Bantamweight Title Fight, this was posted on F4W: “When asked what’s next for new bantamweight champion Cody Garbrandt, White brought up that TJ Dillashaw said that the UFC was rigged if he didn’t get the next shot. So he laughed and said that he should give Dominick Cruz a rematch to prove him right.” If that happens, the UFC could easily see themselves in legal trouble for penalizing somebody for trying to unionize.

7. The upcoming schedule for the UFC is very weak. There are 5 cards over the next 2 months with 1 PPV. The PPV card is extremely weak with a Holly Holm unwarranted title fight as a headliner. I can’t think of a worse position WME could be in at this point.

45 you make some very excellent points i totally agree with you they have one big draw now, that has to be scary for the new owners, if not for mcgregor this year would have been a disaster . they cannot rely on one person to sell ppvs. i remember when they had 4 to 6 guys they knew would draw well no matter what.

i also think this will entice them to have gsp fight.

if mcgregor does indeed only fight once next year, they will have a horrible year .

they keep promoting people , like ronda, and paige van zant, neither one of them are that good .

They aren’t just promoting the wrong fighters, they are also promoting fights the wrong way.

In MMA, you need to promote both fighters. Sure, one can get more attention, but you need to promote both sides. Right now they have some decent females who are basically unknown because they won fights they weren’t being promoted in.

Rizin did it for me. As takada said, they’re not competing with ufc,”quality over quantity” Fighting spirit was on display. I mean, Tenshin wants to replace crazy horse on one days notice? tenshin just had his arm barred fights 2 days later and thats ok with the rizin bosses…
Kron goes against the crusher and beats him.
The completely outmatched 50 year old pro wrestler hotta shows more heart and skill than RR.
HH shows he can still fight like a crazy horse after 8 years on the shelf.
And CC ko’s 3.8 legit fighters in 2 nights was impressive.
joe Warren’s brain dead wrestling biased commentary was a drag for sure. But a crazy 2 day rizin is something to look forward to. More than the overhyped weakly ufc trickle for sure.

Rizin did it for me. As takada said, they’re not competing with ufc,”quality over quantity” Fighting spirit was on display. I mean, Tenshin wants to replace crazy horse on one days notice? tenshin just had his arm barred fights 2 days later and thats ok with the rizin bosses…
Kron goes against the crusher and beats him.
The completely outmatched 50 year old pro wrestler hotta shows more heart and skill than RR.
HH shows he can still fight like a crazy horse after 8 years on the shelf.
And CC ko’s 3.8 legit fighters in 2 nights was impressive.
joe Warren’s brain dead wrestling biased commentary was a drag for sure. But a crazy 2 day rizin is something to look forward to. More than the overhyped weakly ufc trickle for sure.

Rousey. A one tick pony with a great specialized skill set. But if don’t evolve , people will figure you out.

The fact that she never developed her stand up game was a killer. No head movement, no defense, and terrible striking technique. Well at least she has coach that will help her develop that part of her game. ):

exactly she is the royce gracie of womens mma, benefitted from fighting girls who didnt train full time and had no skill sets for submissions, now these girls are better and ronda wasnt that good to begin with. whe was hyped up and built up by the ufc.

and could do no wrong, i remember when connor didnt want to do as much media work, and he gets pulled from ufc 200. but ronda got a free pass

Peeuww, now we have a dumb as dirt mini connor wannabe pulling a Twood! Who the fook is this guy?

Anyway, the peuwfc catering only to its stars and treating the rest like dirt nothing new. But now it has a more insidiously denigrating tone dictated by the new zionist boss. In the past Dana would lie about a fighter, they dont move the needle or they dont really want to fight and get some backlash from the fans. Now dana simply uses terms like conspiracy theorist to dismiss TJ’s criticism. Now he has hollywood script writers crafting his version of reality for them.
TJ was the most impressive fighter on that card by far,worthy of praise but dana just brought up old stuff.
Sad sad stuff…

Nobody here is saying the UFC is going to die soon. Look at the landscape they are going against:

1. WME is doing a poor job of promoting the fighters.

2. WME purchased the UFC for a huge amount of money and is now under huge pressure to create revenues. These pressure are most certainly creating poor, short sighted decisions.

3. The money WME wants for the new contract is going to be hard to get. ESPN is losing subscribers every month. They are losing $75 Million on one NFL post season game alone. I think the biggest story of the next 10 years is the DECREASE in TV contracts for major sporting events.

4. Just look at the upcoming UFC schedule. It looks really bad in the next two months. They are doubling down on females to get them good FOX ratings, but that will only sustain for so long. Outside of McGregor, there isn’t any big title fights to sell. And McGregor is basically ducking the competition at this point.

5. Continued pressure to pay the fighters more will eventually hit a boiling point.

Will the UFC be around next year? Absolutely. But there are serious signs of problems. Heck, there were serious issues with the UFC in 2013 & 2014, and then Rousey was there to mask some of the problems. Those problems have just been compounded now that she is gone and the UFC needs to make so much more money now.